Twitter Hit With Another Claim of Using Foreign Laws to Stifle American Speech

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Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty

Twitter has been hit with another claim that it is using the laws of a foreign country in an attempt to stifle and punish American speech on the social media platform.

John Lott, the gun violence expert who heads the Crime Prevention Research Center, wrote in a New York Daily News column Thursday that Twitter recently locked the center’s account because the News article it tweeted contained quotes from the New Zealand mass killer, and that New Zealand and Australia have laws against sharing the manifestos of shooters.

Lott contends that many other Twitter accounts have tweeted a link to that same News piece, including the New York Daily News itself to its over 700,000 followers.

“But none of these other accounts have been locked or had posts removed for linking to the article,” wrote Lott.

He said that a Twitter representative concluded that the only possible explanation was that someone “reported” the CPRC tweet, but that no one reported the other accounts’ tweets.

“It is scary that a government halfway around the world can censor completely accurate American political debates, effectively interfering in our democratic process,” Lott wrote.

“It is still scarier when this censorship is selectively applied to tweets by conservatives.”

His complaint is that latest accusation against Twitter claiming that a foreign country is trying to suppress American speech.

Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin said earlier this year that Twitter sent her a notice that one of her tweets from four years ago violated the law in Pakistan.

“Last week, the little birdies in Twitter’s legal department notified me that one of my tweets from 2015 is ‘in violation of Pakistan law,’” Malkin wrote in a blog post.

She said the tweet in question featured a compilation image of the 12 Muhammad cartoons published by a Danish newspaper.

Human rights activist Ensaf Haidar, who is Canadian, also claimed in November to have received a Twitter warning, saying that one of her tweets violated Pakistani law.

Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at dng@breitbart.com

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